Top 11 Free iOS Development Tools Every Coder Needs

Just Total Tech

02 Dec 2013

Developing iOS is not rocket science anymore. iOS is a high-end platform for developers to build high-quality and innovative mobile apps by writing quality code. It is used in millions of iPhone, iPads, iPods, and Apple wearables.

Originally the design was to work with languages like C and C++. But nowadays, more advanced iOS versions are there working with Objective-C and swift.

Almost every organization wants the customized app that helps them grow business. The demand for iOS developer has increased drastically in past years.

iOS frameworks get available associates or interfaces, you need to write software for the platform. In this assiduous time, you need to save time and thus desire to get positive and excellent feedbacks with less quantity time and more quality work. These frameworks will make you work a less hard and to enable best practices for development on the iOS platform.

Selected list of classes and frameworks can be used as building blocks when creating apps for iOS devices. There are various iOS frameworks and recently 10 widely used frameworks are specific to iOS7. These are –

1. XCode

Using XCode You can develop apps for iPhone, iPad, Mac book, Apple watch, and Apple TV. You can also customize your app using plugins to get a customized experience you always desired.

2. AppCode

JetBrains is the developer of AppCode. It is an iOS development tool supports many languages like Objective-C, C++, JavaScript, and Swift. It comes with a 30-day free trial.

AppCode provides coding assistance, analysis for code and it also highlights errors. This is the key feature in AppCode.

AppCode can be used for the app development for Mac Book, iPhone, iPads, Apple watch, and Apple TV.

3. Unity

Unity comes first in mind as one of the best cross-platform mobile game and app development tools. With Unity, you can ‘Build Once Deploy Anywhere.’ This means you only have to write the code once for a particular game and app, and then you are free to publish it on multiple mobile platforms.

All you have to do is to focus on game mechanics and create a wonderful gaming experience for your audience who are going to play it on maybe iOS, Android, Android TV, Windows Phone 8, BlackBerry 10, Mac, Linux/Steam OS, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Morpheus, Web Player and WebGL, Wii U, Xbox One and 360.

Overall, Unity can be defined as a highly upgraded robust platform for ‘multiplatform 3D and 2D games.’ A closed source development application, Unity offers flexibility to the game developers while interactive experiences to the players.

4. Code Runner

Code Runner is also one of the most used tools for iOS app development. It supports 23 languages including Objective-C, C++, and Swift.

Code Runner is easy to use, a highly flexible and advanced programming tool for iOS app development. With Code Runner, you can debug code with the breakpoint. The speed is also fast and it is lightweight. It also provides a large number of code templates. The price is also nominal, and a demo version is also available.

5. RxSwift

RxSwift is the most recommended library for no synchronous programming. It responds to user event and data changes. RxSwift is reactive programming library.

6. Appcelerator

Appcelerator Titanium simplifies mobile app development by using a single JavaScript codebase. At the same time, it ensures amazing mobile app experiences and improves communication.

As one of the best solutions for fulfilling the needs of many developers, Titanium gives an open, expansible environment for building rich, native apps ‘at the speed of mobile’ and helps market them quickly. Its key features include:

More than 5,000 APIs for iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows and HTML5

Live prototyping

Code optimization

Fully integrated automated testing

Real-time analytics with a real-time view of every app

Improved quality and control

7. Testflight

Apple uses TestFlight to test the products. It is a native framework. By using Testflight you can invite users for beta testing of your appellation. With Testflight you can invite 10,000 testers.

8. Fabric

Fabric helps you to easily integrate new services into the current app. It is highly integrated with your software development environment. It is a mobile platform tool, helps you to develop better apps.

The Fabric is a powerful app development tool. It is lightweight and fast crash reporting tool also. It will automate your beta application distribution and formation process.

9. Sencha

Sencha is the most popular tool for apps and game development. It has three customized frameworks — Sencha Ext JS, Sencha GXT, and Sencha Touch — to develop apps in HTML5. Sencha Touch is a high-speed framework and builds powerful mobile apps for a Android iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone.

Sencha is popular for offering superior user experience for businesses with its native-like rich apps. It has more than 50 built-in components and a built-in MVC system to enable developers to make compatible mobile and mobile web apps.

Lately, it’s announced that Sencha is going to release Ext JS 5, which means that it will now target cross-platform app creation with JavaScript codebase to build apps that will support touch events on smartphones and tablets.

10. NativeScript

NativeScript is also a cross-platform app building tool with a native UI for iOS and Android. It gives access to developers for APIs via JavaScript. NativeScript also allows reusing of packages from CocoaPods, Gradle, and NPM to create a highly featured app that makes the user interface easier.

NativeScript also lets developer use JavaScript that doesn’t need internet. It gives full access to the development libraries. It uses native components and has direct access to native APIs.